The Unexplainable End to the Thing Called Sanity
by SqornshellousZeta
Summary: When sneaking back from the kitchens one night, the marauders (and a greasy fiend) find themselves in an insane world. Will they ever get out? Was Adavia Stellona right? Will Adhamhnan Uallgarg Muireadhach ever eat his poptart in peace?


Written by Megan, a fifth year Gryffindor student, The Unexplainable End to the Thing Called Sanity (and applesauce) is an eighty-foot writing assignment assigned by Professor McGonagall when said student was found after hours snooping in the kitchens. Megan would first like to say that she does not own or have permission of any kind what so ever to write a marauder fan fiction that is inspired by other countless things she had read. She is making no money, but would like to note that reviews are as good as money on this website she is posting her homework on. The following is a grade she got by one Professor Snape...

P-for poor. This student lacks the knowledge of the fact that a Slytherins could never be allies with Gryffindors. ESPECIALLY ME! Professor Severus Snape, potions master. (Snape fails to realize that Megan had earlier taken the liberty to sneak a peak inside his pensieve and after much black mail, managed to piece together the whole story).

Now without further ado...

The Unexplainable End to the Thing Called Sanity

**Part One: Pranks and Portholes**

There has been very few times in the history of the world shared by muggles, wizards, werewolves, centaurs, vampires, unintelligent creatures and extremely intelligent monkeys that were taught by wizards to talk and later were mistaken as missing links that a brave and noble group of Gryffindors would team up with a cunning and sly group of Slytherins to achieve a common goal. In fact this odd and unbelievable event as said by the celebrated seer Adavia Stellona, will only happen five times...ever. Granted that Adavia Stellona had at once tried to convince the Headmaster of her time to allow a fifth house known as the Slytherpuffindors, her visions had (almost) always came true. Now, precisely five hundred years since the death of Adavia the fourth short-lived alliance of Gryffindors and Slytherins will take place. In years to come, some who had not witnessed this with their own eyes (and some who had, but preferred for the sake of how things had always been, to pretend that nothing historically relevant had happened) would claim that this was just a story. A story stirred up by the deranged and ludicrous mind of Albus Dumbledore. Oh how wrong they were.

Let us start my tale of this so-called 'story' on a Tuesday at precisely eleven o'clock PM in the lovely and cozy Gryffindor common room. Here, yes in this very room, amidst the snores of Gryffindor second year population, all of whom had tried desperately to stay awake while studying for their transfiguration test they seem (are) doomed to fail, sits a young man of around fifteen. This boy, while seeming innocent to spectators was really, at heart, a true madman. While being quite handsome at first glance, if you looked longer at him you would notice a light that shone in his eyes to make him look unmistakably evil and demonic and gave him the mad look of an amused potions teacher that was circling a hopeless Hufflepuff. This boy answers to the names Padfoot, Sirius Black, Sirius and Black. He was widely known for being the only Hogwarts student to successfully drive five potions teachers home crying and one professor McGonagall back to her firewhisky obsession.

Now it is time for a major plot twist of the story. Not one, nor two, but three more boys entered the room. One of them, while being shorter and less dashing then Sirius was the admired, athletic and always annoying James Potter AKA Prongs. He was one of the last few fans of the game Creaothceann, a game played on broomsticks in which players (unintelligent victims) strapped cauldrons onto their craniums and flew around bravely until knocked senseless by a large rock, which they had caught successfully. James too was and greatly well liked by his role as Gryffindor Quidditch caption and Chaser. Quite a lot of people also knew him as the boy who was turned down for a date by Lily Evans...thirty-eight stinking times. Oh yes, he also had black untidy hair and poor eyesight that would later be inherited by his future son.

The second boy was James and Sirius' quiet and almost invisible accomplice Remus Lupin. No he was not transparent by any means, but rather liked being unseen, unheard of and unnoticed by most of the Hogwarts community. Despite the fact that he was under the full moon, a dark creature capable of eating up to twenty squeaky charms professors, Remus AKA Moony strives for a normal life full of chocolate frogs and highly sweetened iced tea. His appearance would make one assume that he was a sweet, innocent, small, thin, sickly boy with light brown hair and yellowish eyes, not the mastermind behind more then half the pranks pulled within the castle walls.

The last and well, to put it nicely, least of the four is the pudgy Peter Pettigrew also known as Wormtail who was more enthusiastic than a fangirl who found her way into Hollywood. Unlike the other three he was on a scale of one to ten, if pushed, slightly less dangerous then applesauce (that is unless you find applesauce in any way, shape or form dangerous).

Upon the arrival of his partners in crime, Sirius Black lazily stood from his comfortable position on the couch in front of the very hot fireplace. He stumbled across the bodies of sleeping second years to where he friends stood, full to the bursting point with chaotic and mischievous plans to make themselves feared and respected by the evil lurking in every dungeon known as the Slytherins.

Communicating in a few simple nods with Sirius, James Potter pulled out of his Quidditch pajama pockets the four mayhem making marauder's most prized possession. A map. But not just any map. This map was charmed by Moony to show the entire Hogwarts castle, hexed by Padfoot to show where everybody was at every minute of every day and who they were, bewitched by Prongs to only allow the few who knew the password to see what secrets the map held and cursed by Wormtail to have a personality of its own. Thanks to Wormtail's pitiful lack of attention during transfiguration and charms classes, the map insisted on being called Stan (though nobody would know this if they had only read the fantastic novels about James Potter's son and his red haired and book wormy friends) and had a very pessimistic outlook on its parchmenty life. As a wand tip tapped it's (or shall I say his) surface and the words "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good" were muttered by Remus, the map answered in beautiful scrawling words 'You might as well, you will all die anyway, but not me. I am cursed to live a life inside this parchment and ink. Forever. I might as well be burned in a bonfire, or be stuck inside caretaker Filch's desks.'

"That's the spirit!" Sirius answered in an amused voice. Remus rolled his eyes at the map as he savagely bit off the head of a chocolate from and watched the limbs twitch miserably, as it struggled to live as a headless sweet.

"We could take the short cut through the underground tunnel, that would take us to the kitchens faster," James muttered. Despite the fact that there were countless underground tunnels, Sirius, Remus and Peter knew exactly the one James had mentioned. It was the well-known tunnel, which was the home of the Hogwarts black market, respectively ran by the sixth years who were not expecting a hugely important test by the end of the year. It was where one could find the best deals on banned objects from Hogwarts. Most students believed that none of the teachers knew a thing that the market was still being held, but some had a growing suspicion that Dumbledore knew all about it and let it continue, regarding the market as an old Hogwarts tradition.

"Nah," Sirius answered. "You know how crowded that place is at this time of night. I say we make our way towards the Hufflepuff common room, turn left at the statue of Harvey the hairy headed, make our way through the staircase of unbelievable terror and then all we have to do is beat the four headed troll tapestry in a battle of stupidity so he will let us in it's secret passage, leading to the fruit portrait. Later once we are done charming the Slytherins breakfasts we can slip through the hall of ever wandering wanders and take the moving staircase back to the Gryffindor tower!"

"Or," said Remus as though the greatest idea just hit him (and indeed compared to the harebrain schemes thought of by the four, this one was quite clever) "we could take Prong's invisibility cloak, slip through the crowd in the underground tunnel unnoticed and make our way to the kitchens in no less then five minutes without having any injuries caused by a four headed troll that Padfoot is bound to tease."

"I'm with Moony!" both James and Peter said instantly. Sirius looked a bit put down, but silently agreed that Remus' ideas were less likely to get them killed, expelled and usually worked.

So that is how their supposedly foolproof plan was supposed to go. They would sneak to the kitchens under James Potters invisibility cloak and charm the Slytherin's food to make them realize the simple truth that the meaning to life, the universe and everything is not chocolate pudding (though this was strongly argued against by Remus Lupin) and lead them into a state of great depression and letting Gryffindors curse them with out much great difficulty.

Upon entering the underground tunnel and making their way through a large group of huge Slytherin seventh years, another plot twist occurred in what it seems like this totally plotless wander. Peter who was shaking with excitement suddenly and quite loudly tripped over a green and silver scarf, lying quite innocently on the tunnel floor. Much like lining chocolate frog cards in a row and tipping over the first one, making all the others fall, Peter succeeded in dragging his three friends along with him. As the four friends fell to their supposed doom, a hand thrust out of the cloak, grabbed fifth year archrival to James Potter, Severus Snape by the collar of his robes and pulled him along for the ride.

What happened next none of the boys neither Slytherin nor Gryffindor could explain. It was as though the ground they hit sunk from beneath them and pulled them into the ground itself. Next they found themselves in an unknown, unexplored and dark place. Much like what the muggles call The Twilight Zone, this place passes far beyond the reach of imagination. Sometimes when people find themselves in a place like this, they met their worst fears, most desperate desires and most undesirable never ending desserts, which they are forced to eat by the inhabitants of these places. Inhabitants? Yes creatures do dwell here. Being cousins to the creatures called boggarts these unnamed beasts have the same magical abilities as they do, but with much more imagination and a greater sense of humor. The experts at the Department of Magical Creatures believe that these creatures also have the ability to show the future and the past, but those who have survived this kind of punishment are in no condition to talk about it.

Sirius Black was the first one to come out of a state of shock. He, being the one on top of the makeshift pyramid suddenly realized and the heap of robes and limbs he was squishing was in fact his friends and possibly more people. The next thing he noticed was that the four and more were in total and complete darkness, but not a normal darkness. A normal darkness is usually described as like a black paper sack pulled over ones head, this darkness however was not black and seemed to have no color at all. After hearing a few colorful muffled words underneath him, Sirius crawled down off of whoever-was-second-less-squished. After much cursing, pushing, hitting, kicking, name calling and biting (not in the case of Remus thankfully) the bruised and rattled boys sat together (yes including Snape) wide-eyed in hopes of not being eaten, murdered or made to eat any never ending deserts (such as applesauce). Sirius, who's glass was still half full and not knocked over in the mad struggle to push people off him, decided it was quite best to start a conversation least he go insane with the thriving happiness and curiosity at finding a totally unexplored place in the Hogwarts castle.

"It's dark."

"I know," answered a depressed, hollow voice, which seemed rather close to Sirius' left ear. This unnerved Sirius quite a lot.

"Yahhhg," yelled Sirius as he flung his left arm out, trying to catch whoever was speaking in his ear, only to find that there was nobody beside him. This unnerved Sirius even more. "Who's there?"

Faintly Sirius believed he could faintly hear the names James Potter, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew and a panicky Severus Snape, but paid no attention to them, as he was too busy listening to the startling reply he received from the disembodied voice.

"Why Sirius," it started in a sarcastic tone, "I am your conscience you have ignored for the last thirteen years." A normal person would have panicked at the prospect of having their conscience gain the confidence to speak to them. Sirius however was not a normal person and that was not what was on his mind.

"Why do I only hear you in my left ear?"

"Because the left side of your hardly existing brain, the side that deals with math and most of your learning is empty enough that I may sit in hear and wonder where I have went wrong in those early years of your life," the voice was once again depressed. "I have made a permanent home here as the right side of your brain is far to terrifying to explore. I believe that anything disturbing that is possible to ponder in ones brain, one will ponder it, anything intelligent that one should be pondering in ones brain, one will push it to the very back and anything happy and cheerful in ones brain will be gone when they hit their teenage years. I know this is true. I have seen everything in your mind. I know all."

The unnerved, disturbed, perturbed and rather hungry Sirius felt, if possible even unhappier as the voice continued.

"I often feel like it is my fault you are as you are. I believe that I might have done a better job serving as a conscious for you. Of course I've always known I was a failure. The last soul I conscioused insisted on channeling prehistoric cavemen and wearing a jellyfish for a hat. Of course when the council of consciouses found out, they sent me to guide you. That is why when I feel like it is my fault and that I could have done a better job, I tell myself it is not my fault, but the council's fault. I begged that they may let me have a smarter companion, good heavens I even begged for Stan Shunpike, but no they said that I will be Sirius Black's happy conscious that guides him for life and is fun to be with."

Everything Sirius had earlier felt turned into confusion as his conscious sighed heavily, little did he know four other faces in the room he was in mirrored his expression.

James had never liked the dark. Dark was just, well, dark! You couldn't play quidditch in the dark, you couldn't plan pranks in the dark and his glasses were pretty much useless in the dark. Sometimes James felt depressed when he was in dark places, but today he felt another emotion rush to him. Fear? No, that couldn't be it. "A Potter knows no fear," he mumbled as Sirius began yelling again.

"Well you know what? I would rather have a mutated cricket with a top hat!!!" "I don't care, I've had enough, get outta my head!" Sirius' arms started to wave dangerously around him, hitting James and the back of the head and Remus square on the nose.

Remus had been having a very trying day. It started with waking up with the sound of somebody arguing over quidditch teams, having to take a cold shower (somebody had taken all the hot water), finding no cheerfulness in his happy, healthy, cheerful charms, marshmallow cereal, getting a P in potions, eating the last of his chocolate frog supply and now he sat in a dark, unexplored and possibly dangerous room with a newly acquired broken nose. Little did he know the last thirty minutes of his day were about to get remarkably worse.

As I said before, Severus Snape is the archrival of James Potter. He is a greasy, pale potions bookworm with no friends and not capable of a single happy thought. He hates sports, sunshine, summer, spring, smiles and most of all marauders. He was so incredibly nasty, slimy, and rude and above all a little Slytherin smarty-pants that first years even have poetry readings dedicated to him.

Black and Potter are heroes,

Lupin talks to few,

But if you want to talk about Snape,

He's less likable than Pettigrew.

Oh why are we so tortured,

With learning boring stuff,

When we come together and agree,

That sharing a castle with Snape is enough.

And the verse that was attached about twenty years later...

He's really cruel to Harry,

Ron and Hermione too,

And if I had to go anywhere near him,

I'd rather join SPEW.

At the moment, despite the fact that Snape was an unhappy person, he was even unhappier at the moment being stuck with his least favorite people.

Peter slept.

"SIRIUS!!!" both James and Remus shouted, but before they tackle said person they heard noise which made all five students freeze and made their hair stand on end. It gripped and froze their hearts; even Sirius' conscience was silent. It started out sounding small, but gradually got larger. It was the sound of...bagpipes.

**Part Two: Meeting Hogwarts**

Now to understand the next part we have to go back around a thousand years. When the Hogwarts School was built. When Salazar Slytherin and Godric Gryffindor posters were pasted all over girl's walls everywhere. When they were the pranksters of the day. When Rowena Ravenclaw had written her first book about everything you never need to know on how cockroaches can be used in potions. When Helga Hufflepuff made the first pumpkin pastry in celebration for the new school they had created. When the group of five was inseparable. Five? Yes along with the famous four there was Gryffindor's cousin who just like the others, helped create the castle. His name was Harold Hogwarts. The five had lived in peace for a while until one tragic day when Godric and Hogwarts were arguing over who got to name the castle. And both being conceited and unbearably bigheaded, wanted to name the large hollowed rock after themselves. Finally they decided to duel to the death. The other three founders were until this point, smart enough to stay out of the argument. Rowena and Helga begged that they might settle their differences in a different way, but the men's mind's remained unchanged. At precisely eleven twenty three, the two men stood facing each other in a deserted underground hallway and began to duel. The duel lasted fifty-three days and fifty-three nights, stopping only for bathroom breaks and snack time so that they could eat applesauce and not die of empty stomach. Finally on the last day, Hogwarts was too drained of energy to lift his wand. He surrendered and begged that Gryffindor would spare his life, but Gryffindor, having no sleep in fifty-three days didn't hear any of the pleading. He raised his wand with a shaky hand and cursed Hogwarts. Years later Gryffindor started to feel bad about what he did to Hogwarts. He didn't kill him, but imprisoned him to stay, immortal inside the castle. He proclaimed that the school would be named Hogwarts after his courageous cousin.

And still, to the marauders day, Hogwarts stayed in his own little wonderland, waiting for someone from the outside to enter his world. It is quite safe to say, that the many years of loneliness, as he only had the boggart creatures to talk to and they were not up for much conversation caused Hogwarts to go quite insane.

The bagpipes, now with drums continued their evil tune as the five boys stood back-to-back (minus Peter who was still asleep) shaking with suppressed fear. Remus was the first one to notice that the tune the instruments were playing was the Hogwarts theme song. A large bright sun rolled into the 'sky' waking Peter up and making the other three cover their eyes.

"WHATS GOING ON?" Sirius screamed as loud and high-pitched singing filled the air.

"Ah! Light!" said James. Remus checked his watch. Only twenty minutes left in the day.

"Oh joy."

"If you need me, give me a call, though I highly doubt you will do so," Sirius' conscience muttered before going back into it's state of depression.

Suddenly, abruptly and unexpectedly a deep growling voice sprang out of the blue and started...speaking.

"Who enters my domain? Why it is not my dear cousin Gryffindor I presume."

Snape gasped, Sirius' eyes popped out of his head, Remus repeatedly opened and closed his mouth, Peter fainted and James...James was too busy celebrating the light to notice anything.

"Well I didn't really expect my great, oh so brave cousin to descend from on high to mingle with a commoner like me. Anyway, who are you and how dare you enter my domain?"

"Didn't you just ask that?" Remus asked, scratching the side of his head.

"Did I?" the voice asked back, clearly confused.

"I believe you just did," confirmed Remus.

"Wait, are you talking about the first or second time I asked the question?"

"I don't know. Why did you ask it twice?"

"I believe it was to get my point across."

"What is your point?"

The voice was stumped, that is if a voice can be. At that moment Hogwarts began a soul-searching journey to answer question, what is his point. Why is he here? Where is his body? Why is applesauce regarded as evil? Luckily Hogwarts had a short attention span.

"It is quite lonely here you know. Will you be my friend?" Hogwarts asked eagerly.

"No," Remus answered simply, "I prefer to think of you as an acquaintance. If you let me out before midnight and promise never to speak to me again or have the sound of your bagpipes reach my ears then I may think of you as a friend."

"Oh, OK!" the voice replied cheerfully. "My name is Hogwarts, Harold Hogwarts!"

"Remus Lupin," Remus replied and shook the hand that just materialized out of thin air (or not so thin as the air was truly thick of the odor of applesauce the boggart creatures were snacking on somewhere or other in the large room). "Them who are cowering in fear behind me are my frien-uh other acquaintances, all except the greasy one, he is an enemy of my acquaintances so he is an enemy of mine too."

"Oh!" the voice squealed in delight at the sight of all the other people who could be his acquaintances. Seconds later four more hands materialized out of the thick air and all of them were shook, except the one in front of Peter who once again was unconscious.

"Where has sanity gone?" Snape asked himself. "I would really like to introduce it to these idiots."

"I knew sanity once!" announced Hogwarts. "He wouldn't be my friend either," Hogwarts sighed. "I wish I knew where he went. I would apologize for whatever my behavior was that scared him away and give him a hug because I think he needs it."

"Sanity has a gender?" Sirius, who has been uncharacteristically quiet until this point, asked.

"Well duh you bloody idiot!" his conscience practically screamed at him.

"Of course he does! He-" Hogwarts abruptly stopped talking. Suddenly lightning shot across the sky and clouds covered it. "And I think you just hurt his feelings," Hogwarts muttered.

"Sanity has feelings?"

**Part Three: Return of his Sanity**

A deep thundering voice roared in the mighty storm, which was going on above them. It took deep, seething, angry breaths, wheezed and coughed then spoke.

"I am the great Sanity! I am angry with you and it would only be sane that I blast you out of existence at this very moment in time!"

Peter woke up.

That very moment everything became sane. All the insanity in the world, muggle, wizard, werewolf, centaur, vampire, unintelligent creature and extremely intelligent monkeys that were taught by wizards to talk and later were mistaken as missing links, alike suddenly vanished out of existence. Which meant that everything went kaboom. Ice cream was gone. Disney World was gone. There was no such thing as Saturday or summer break. The sun, the moon, the stars and other planets suddenly saw the pointlessness in their existence without the earth and blew themselves up. All things and everything disappeared into a blank, colorless void in nothingness, and only two people knew it.

Adhamhnan Uallgarg Muireadhach waited as his newly installed toaster toasted a poptart. Suddenly he decided that he believed the earth would come to an end in roughly five minutes. And it did.

Adavia Stellona looked up from her crystal ball. Brown hair fell over her eyes as lines of worry creased across her young face. She took another bite of applesauce. 'I have to do something to prevent this future catastrophe, but what?' she thought to herself. She had been having nightmares of it for weeks now. It haunted her day in night as if to say 'this is your destiny! Save the universe you moron!' She opened her dusty desk drawer and pulled out a tiny gold hourglass, sometimes known as a time-turner by those who knew what it was. She held it in her hand as she stared out the window into the sunny blue outside. She knew the dangers of time travel. The future now rests with her. The fate of the handsome Sirius Black, the greasy Severus Snape, the brave James Potter, the intelligent Remus Lupin and the pudgy Peter Pettigrew was in her hands. She had to save them; it was her destiny, her calling. She began flipping the time-turner forward numberless times. Suddenly she felt a gust of wind as she was pulled forward through time. She looked around to see stars shooting past her and quickly closed her eyes as she was lurched forward.

Boggart-like-creature-number-one whose name was Fred looked at boggart-like-creature-number-two whose name was Bob.

"This is excellent stuff Bob!" said Fred as he took another mouthful of applesauce.

"Smashing isn't it!" Bob replied.

"Perhaps we should go force some on those pathetic beings who just materialized into our domain" said Fred.

"Yes, of course and..." Bob stopped mid-sentence as a girl appeared in front of him. She pulled a stick out of her very old-fashioned purse and muttered the "Lumos" spell.

"Applesauce?" Fred offered the girl.

Adavia just stared. That was the first word she heard that would be said five hundred years after she would die. The realization of that shocked her and surprised her to no end. She felt so shocked that she felt she might go insane.

"I asked if you wanted any applesauce!!!" Fred yelled. Adavia finally noticed him and jumped backward, meanwhile listening to something about some conscience torturing ones brain. Finally she answered.

"No, I just had some about five hundred years ago."

"Ah, that's nice," Fred said and went back to his applesauce.

"I wish I had a napkin," Bob muttered as he realized the mess he was making.

"Oh, here," Adavia said as she picked up a piece of parchment that was randomly lying on the floor and would make a good napkin substitute. When she had it in her hands she quickly realized what it was and decided not to give it to Bob.

"The marauders map!" she said in a surprised voice. Then suddenly an idea began to form in her mind. Not a very good one and it strangely had nothing to do with the marauders ma- Stan, but she might as well go along with it. She pointed her wand to the scene going on a while away from her and did the fast-forwarding spell.

Peter woke up.

Adhamhnan Uallgarg Muireadhach watched his poptart burn in the toaster.

Sirius Black watched as Sanity raised its (his) ugly hand; ready to strike the nonsense filled earth and as a girl ran across the room and screamed "STOP!" Sirius looked down at the map she dropped and picked it up. The map was the marauders map he dropped when he came here. His conscience beamed with delight as a sentence crossed the map that told his conscience that somebody finally agreed with it.

"This entire situation is insane and I hate you Sirius," was what the map said. His conscience loved it.

Remus looked at his watch. One minute till twelve.

Peter began to fall asleep again.

James treasured what he believed as his last minutes with the light.

Severus tried to find his happy place.

Finally Peter slumped forward, bumping into James who was singing about light and James fell down on top of Severus who slid across the floor, leaving a trail of slime, which slipped Remus who fell and tripped Sirius who let out a piercing scream as he fell.

This whole thing distracted them from what Adavia did to destroy Sanity.

"You did it!" Hogwarts shouted happily.

"Well at least somebody appreciated what I did," Adavia huffed as she watched Peter, Sirius, James, Remus and Severus try to get out of the heap of black robes and limbs. She took out her time-turner and returned to her own time to watch the invention of the Berty Bott's potato flavored jellybean.

"Well, alls well that ends weird," Sirius said as Hogwarts happily returned them to the real world, only on the promise that they would visit him every so often.

"You do know that by knocking each other down, we were helping each other achieve a common goal we all wanted at the time which was to lie on the floor, close our eyes and whimper until it was over," James said that night before he turned the last dormitory light off.

"Shut up James and let us sleep!" Remus muttered as he buried his face in his pillow. Peter however was not tired and went down to the kitchen before he was abducted by a group of insane home-schoolers (including me!) But that's another story.

Adhamhnan Uallgarg Muireadhach ate his poptart in peace.

The End.


End file.
